4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
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In China today, looking good is seen as key to career success. With beauty videos promoting extreme weight-loss flooding social media, beauty apps making booking surgery click of a button away, China’s cosmetic surgery industry is booming.
But the surge in demand has led to a shortage of qualified practitioners and licensed clinics. Hundreds of accidents are happening inside Chinese clinics every day.
We talk to young women pressured into cosmetic procedures and expose the surgeon behind one of China’s most notorious botched surgeries. You can hear the full investigation ‘Make me Perfect’ on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts just search for ‘BBC the documentary’.
Presenter: Natalia Zuo Producer: Ly Truong Editors: Rebecca Henschke and Monica Garnsey Mixed by: Gareth Jones
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0:00.0 | I am trying out this extremely popular plastic surgery app. |
0:07.5 | So young, it's a beauty platform app and it has millions of active monthly users |
0:12.6 | extremely popular with young women. |
0:15.1 | So I'm going to take a picture of myself, find the best lighting, sort out my hair, and snap. Okay okay so this is what they call the magic mirror |
0:25.9 | function it's an air function and just let the app analyze your so-called imperfections and |
0:32.5 | recommend procedures you see all these white dots moving around my face analyzing it so it. So it thinks I've got the posh lady face. |
0:40.4 | And it has a lot of different style of faces next to it. |
0:44.3 | What exotic face, influencer face, and this is ridiculous. |
0:48.9 | This face is called marriage material face. |
0:51.5 | Just out of curiosity, I'm going to click on marriage material face and see what |
0:56.5 | it asked me to do. Well, okay, well then. So it asked me to remove my wrinkle, extend my chin, |
1:03.7 | and a jawline reduction also asked me to open my outer eye corner and thinning my lips. |
1:13.5 | Well, in general, just not really happy with my face. |
1:16.4 | So on, it's really, really convenient and it's very unique to the Chinese plaster |
1:20.6 | surgery market. |
1:22.2 | A second to snap a photo, a minute for it to be analysed, a couple minutes to go through |
1:26.3 | the items and procedure recommends, and maybe tomorrow I can be analysed, a couple minutes to go through the items and procedure recommends. |
1:29.1 | And maybe tomorrow I can be wheeled into the operation theatre. |
1:32.7 | This is as easy as shopping online for groceries. |
1:39.3 | In the last decade, China's plastic surgery industry has exploded, fueled by new social media and beauty platforms. |
1:49.7 | Has China's cosmetic surgery boom gone too far? |
1:53.8 | And what happens when something goes wrong? |
... |
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